Late but Welcome Amends

Though it comes half a century late and after the deaths of many survivors of the Holocaust, the agreement by two Swiss banks to settle claims arising out of Jewish assets that disappeared during World War II is just and welcome.

The two banks, Credit Suisse and UBS, with contributions from other Swiss institutions, have agreed to pay $1.25 billion in a series of installments to tens of thousands of Holocaust claimants. That will put an end to a number of class-action lawsuits and to threats of sanctions against Swiss banks that have been made by about a score of U.S. states and 30 cities. The initial payment of $250 million is expected to go largely to the neediest of Holocaust survivors, mainly in Eastern Europe.

The controversy over missing assets has been needlessly prolonged and rancorous. Had Swiss banks made a greater effort to do the right thing by returning to Holocaust survivors or their heirs deposits made shortly before or during World War II, much subsequent suffering, friction and bitterness could have been avoided. But the controversy did, usefully, bring into full public light what the U.S. government and historians had determined decades ago: Banks in neutral Switzerland, including the central bank, had trafficked in gold stolen by the Nazis from the European states they overran as well as from individual Jewish victims. Younger Swiss especially have learned much about their country’s past.

It would be a mistake and an injustice, however, to forget that Switzerland also gave refuge to tens of thousands of Jews who would otherwise almost certainly have perished at the hands of the Nazis and that individual Swiss--officials and private citizens--further helped save many lives. Israel has awarded its Righteous Among the Nations medal to 23 Swiss for their wartime aid in rescuing Jews from persecution. Among them was the diplomat Carl Lutz, who served in Budapest during the war years and is credited with issuing protective letters that saved 62,000 Hungarian Jews from deportation to the death camps. A current photo exhibit at the Los Angeles office of the consulate general of Switzerland tells his story, a story that deserves to be remembered.